


This Fearful Country

by LifeOfRiley



Category: Zoids (Anime & Toys)
Genre: Gen, Nobody is Safe, OCs only - Freeform, Prequel, Tags May Change, Worldbuilding, Zoidtember, chapters have individual content warnings, sort-of post-apocalyptic, unedited & unbeta'd, violence to humans and zoids, warfare, wild zero has not been fully translated so there may be lore errors
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26226541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LifeOfRiley/pseuds/LifeOfRiley
Summary: Nobody expected recolonising Earth would be this hard.A series of loosely connected, non-chronological Zoids Wild ZERO flash fiction for Zoidtember.
Kudos: 4





	1. Day 1 - Plan

_ZAC 3164_

The hammer of legions of feet echoed off the bare metal floor and walls and straight through Alan's stomach. Bodies pressed against him, sweeping him along through what looked more like a hangar than a train station as more and more windowless carriages disgorged their nervous contents. A pre-recorded voice that tried to sound pleasant recited ' _Please report to your designated check-in point._ '

Check-in point, check-in point! Alan craned his neck to try and see over the throngs, clutching his official orange luggage bag close like it was all he had in the world. So many damn signs, so many damn queues. He spotted his more by luck than judgement, 77800—77899 brightly backlit to stand out among every other brightly backlit set of numbers. _Clytemnestra_ 77829\. He'd memorised his evacuation number months ago, to the point it repeated numbly through the back of his brain when he stopped paying attention. Last night he'd spent far too long staring at his papers making absolutely sure he hadn't mistaken it. _Clytemnestra_ 77829.

Alan elbowed his way through the hopeless, gawping crowd to get to his queue, past the sniffer dogs dragging their handlers up and down the lines. Every other queuer's eye he caught looked at him like _he_ might be the resentful maniac about to blow them all to kingdom come. Dammit, he'd been searched and sniffed at every station on the way just like the rest of them. He looked dead ahead at the neck of the person in front of him. He'd had far too little sleep to deal with their shit.

"You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you get there," mum had tried to lighten the mood over breakfast. They'd all dragged themselves out of bed at 3am to see him off, but Alan couldn't help but hate himself as he'd forced down the few forkfuls he could manage. Sure, they'd all agreed they'd sign up separately instead of as a family, everyone knew you had a better shot at the lottery if you claimed you were going solo, but he'd never imagined it would be him leaving them behind. It was supposed to be mum and dad, of course, and he and Jen would have held the fort until inevitably the lottery gods smiled on them too. Goddamn biometrics. He'd have given mum his place if he could have. As it was, dad practically had to threaten him out of the house that morning.

The queue edged forwards. They'd get on another ship, he promised himself, the same promise he'd been making himself ever since his evac papers came through. One with a less stupid name than _Clytemnestra_.

Small-scale security zoids paced calmly around the perimeter of the check-in hall, comfortably threatening violence to anybody who started anything. At the front of another queue, somebody yelled at the attendant, waving their luggage bag. Probably hadn't weighed it a dozen times in advance like they should have. "You can't live on two and a half kilos!" The guards stepped forwards, and a scorpion watched, lowering its tail gun. The pilot had it clack its feet on the ground, and the yelling stopped like magic. A bin was brought out and the objector stood to one side, emptying out precious belongings at gunpoint while the next person moved up.

Alan's own queue passed without incident. He couldn't tell how long—communications devices were banned on punishment of ineligibility, so his phone had been left safely in mum's hands where he could be absolutely certain it wasn't in his bag. The person whose neck he'd become intimately familiar with passed through the security gate, and it was time for him.

"Bag on the scale," said the bored soldier attending as he looked over Alan's papers. The scale read 2.3 kg, the bastards, it'd been 2.1 every time he'd checked! That was why you under-packed, of course. The friendly brochure had warned that home scales shouldn't be relied upon. Another dog came up and sniffed, the attendant unzipped it and took a cursory glance inside, scanned its ID tag, and sent it on its way. Alan watched its bright white Helic flag and his evac number disappear into the sorting machine, to be returned to him on planet Earth. A standing guard ushered him along.

A corridor led into a waiting room, again windowless metal. He grumbled inwardly—he'd hoped it'd be like an airport lounge, that he could have seen the ship that would take him and 160 000 others through the stars. Of course, it wouldn't have been finished, there was no point wasting time leaving the thing sitting there ready to go while it waited for people to be loaded, but that would almost have been more exciting to see. Maybe the ship wasn't even here. Maybe this was just a convenient staging ground. Couldn't let idiots in who'd throw away their shot at survival because they wanted to blow a hole in the only chance a tenth of the population had, after all.

Alan's ears pricked up, instinct catching something before his mind did, and the room started rolling. Some people screamed, parents hunkered over their children, but most of his fellow travellers stood their ground. It passed. The room was no worse for the tremor—maybe a 3 at best.

Entirely too quickly, a harried voice came over the announcer; "Remain calm. The cryosleep facility is not damaged, the cryosleep facility is _not_ damaged. Do not spread rumours. Ask a guard if you need assistance." Looks and whispers went back and forth, but the guards that pushed into the crowd put a stop to them.

One by one, numbers were called, sometimes repeatedly, and people forced their way to a single door at the end of the room where a scrubbed-up orderly scowled. There were no seats. Children sat on the ground, the elderly or sore crouched.

"77829. 77829." Alan practically jumped. The orderly scowled harder.

The small, harshly lit room marked 'Cryo Prep' had nothing but a trestle table, a changing curtain, and somebody who was probably a doctor. "Hand," the probable doctor demanded, and without so much as a by-your-leave she pricked a needle into Alan's thumb. She didn't look at him as the test ran. "Don't lick it. I might need to take another one." Alan put his hand back down.

The doctor shook the test a bit, then seemed satisfied. She pulled open a packet to reveal a needle with an odd sort of opening in the end. "Hand," she said again, practically grabbing it as Alan hesitated, prodded the vein on the back, and ignored Alan's strangled scream as she drove the needle right in. "Don't mess with it. Your cryosuit's behind the curtain, get changed. The port will interface with it."

Alan gritted his teeth, but didn't argue. The cryosuit clung tight to him, obviously made to the measurements he'd had to submit (thank goodness he hadn't lost too much more weight). He swore as he pulled on the glove, the round panel on the back spun on its own and the port in his hand stung sharply again. "You done?" the doctor asked. He mumbled something affirmative as he tried not to rub his hand. "Good. Turn right, out the door at the end of the hall. Find the pod with your number and get in."

He didn't dare ask what was going to happen to his clothes.

Past the next door a guard asked his number, and pointed him to the level it was supposed to be on. A hundred pods, some closed, most open, stacked in rows of ten on prefab walkways. As Alan climbed the faintly racking metal stairs, he thanked god he was only on the third level.

There, at the far end of the walkway, 77829.

Another guard—the last guard, it occurred to him—stood by. For once, Alan allowed himself to hesitate. He set his hand on the open edge of the chamber, big enough for him and probably not much more. Thick cables ran up and down, and outside a panel showed null for every vital sign.

"This is it," said the guard, not unkindly, "your ticket to freedom." Alan forced a smile, and lay down. He fidgeted a moment, got his arms comfy on the armrests, tried to uncrick his back, choked back another scream as one of the cables drove itself into the port on his glove. Hydraulics hissed. The guard gave a casual wave, then the chamber's hood swung down.

Alan lay in total darkness.

He thought of mum, and dad, and Jen. He'd see them there, he knew it. In a better world. In a kinder world. In a world that wasn't tearing itself apart at the seams.

Damn, it really was cold in here...


	2. Chapter 2

Day 2 - Trapped

_NEC 0002_

Two weeks. Two miserable, stifling weeks they'd all been cooped up in here since the first grand step out onto terra firma ended in gasping, choking, and hastily chasing away the camera crews. The good emperor had assembled a taskforce, and instead of lying asleep until all this blew over, Mira had been thawed and thrust into a piddly little lab that everyone had sworn they'd never need.

She peered down at the slide under her microscope and chewed her lip as one hand flicked mindlessly at her tablet with its ancient book of Earth grasses. Was this _Spartina_ or _Cynodon_? And did it really matter? What was blindingly obvious was that this was not the kind of plant they should be finding on Earth. It showed no sign of a metallised cell wall, its roots were far too fragile, and how were they finding pre-Escape life happy and thriving on an Earth that had been ravaged three thousand years ago?

Two weeks weren't nearly long enough to figure it out, but they were enough for one answer—somebody had screwed up. Bowman would hang for this.

If they could even find him, that was. The _Joint Endeavour_ was conspicuous by its absence among the established Republican colony, and Imperial sensors had lost track of it a few months into the journey. The swine had made a run for Earth, thrown everything into disarray, then gone to ground.

If Bowman had done his one job, Mira wouldn't have been stuck in this wretched metal pit when she probably had more hours in scuba gear than all the mouth-breathing grunts who were the only ones allowed outside put together.

Breathe, she told herself, and tried to put it into practice. Breathe.

Mira sat for a moment. It didn't work.

She swept the slide off the microscope, grabbed her tablet and a bag of kit, and tried to make stomping out of the lab look dignified. The grass book went away—out came that wonderfully prescient ancient, who had documented human anatomy just years after the Escape. Mira set her nose into it and trusted that any oncomers would be intelligent enough to get out of her way.

Everybody knew the problem by now. Along with everything else that _hadn't_ happened with Zi-forming, oxygen levels hadn't come up, and trying to breathe 21% oxygen when you'd been used to nearly twice that was a losing proposition. The ancient specimen showed larger alveoli, wider blood vessels, a more robust heart, all built for Earth. The geneticists were losing their heads trying to work out if this was a genome change or a plasticity issue, but the ecology team had a bigger problem.

The door to the stables recognised her and rolled open, and behind it the coarse, broad-shouldered stable master turned to look at her. One of the dragon-horses lolled uselessly on the ground at his feet.

"Not dead yet, I see," said Mira.

Carlson wrinkled his nose, as if anyone could notice under the all the lines from a life of manual labour. "She's fixing to be."

"It doesn't have genitals, Carlson."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, not this again. What do you want?"

"An update. Have any of them died yet?"

Carlson crouched beside the moaning zoid and rubbed its neck. "Not yet." He ground his teeth disgustingly. "Not except the one you had left outside. But you already knew about him."

"Yes, I necropsied it, how good of you to remind me." And some good that necropsy had been, too. "Hold it down. I want some more samples."

"Haven't bathed in enough blood today?"

Mira wasn't going to dignify that with a reply. Not even a snort. She set her kit bag down beside the dragon-horse, out of the way of its weak but still clawed feet, and Carlson got over himself enough to kneel over its head.

Stethoscope first, no abnormal core sounds beyond a general slowing of the fluid movement. Percussion against the belly, where the core sat closest to the skin, came back with nothing unusual. She began to run a probe between the armour plates when the thing decided to start thrashing.

Carlson nobly took the brunt of it, with a banal "Oh, she don't like that." Mira had the good sense to step away until it composed itself again. If it thought it had won, it was quite mistaken. She slid the probe back in again, and this time managed to keep it there while the beast lashed out stupidly.

"It's still got some fight left in it." She regretted saying that almost immediately. Carlson might take it as a compliment.

Fortunately for everybody involved, the sight of the core drill shut him up if he'd planned to gloat about his pets. Mira gave it a quick test whirr, then before the dragon-horse could push its head up to see it she had it wedged between the two open plates.

"Here," she said, fishing a packet of core putty out of her bag and tossing it to the hapless Carlson, "prep that."

Carlson glowered, but knew better than to argue. He began kneading the stuff in his rough, bite-scarred hands while Mira positioned the drill. She pulled the trigger—the dragon-horse screeched and near enough bucked its master right off, but it underestimated Mira. She followed it as it tried to roll, counting out the requisite five seconds before lifting out drill and fluid sample both. Carlson went straight in with the putty to plug the wound, too stupid or panicked to think about the inevitable finger-pinching. For heaven's sake, she'd left the probe right there for him. Well, it was his problem now, Mira thought as he swore and yanked his fingers out from the plates.

He shuffled away from the dragon-horse on his backside, holding his bruised fingers to his chest. "Sorry, girl, it's for the best," he murmured, rubbing the offended spot on the beast with his good hand. He looked up at Mira with scorn. "And what's that gonna tell you?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't have needed it."

"All right, asshole, then why do you want it? I hope it's worth it."

"We'll see," Mira shrugged, deciding against repeating her point. "Checking for pathogens, biochemical changes, any indicia of disease." All the tests so far had shown nothing out of the ordinary, but that just meant she needed to try more tests. Her colleagues would say she was shotgunning, but she didn't like such crude terminology.

"You still think this is a sickness, huh?"

"Are you suggesting it isn't?" Mira raised an eyebrow. Normally that was enough to stop anyone in their tracks, but Carlson must have been riding the adrenaline, because he continued.

"Unless they all caught it back on Zi."

"Excuse me?"

"I checked the flight logs." He looked inordinately proud of himself at that. "Their vitals were dropping all the journey long. Every one. The further we got from Zi, the worse they got."

The first question on Mira's tongue was why _she_ hadn't seen those flight logs, but the next question took precedence. "And what makes you think the issue is distance from Zi, instead of just the passing of time?"

"Time shouldn't've passed in cold sleep."

"That's not how that—"

"Look, these zoids are Zi born and bred. We're from Earth, back in the beginning, we've got a shot at surviving here. But this world isn't theirs. They can't live here."

"They're in Zi atmosphere, being fed on Zi food. Unless you're suggesting your husbandry isn't up to standard?"

"You're not getting it!" Carlson bellowed, red-cheeked. "They can't live here because they shouldn't live here! Earth can't sustain them like Zi couldn't sustain us. Why do you think Zi wanted rid of us?"

Mira's face fell. She'd been fool enough to entertain the hope that this yokel might have an insight. "Don't insult me." She swept the probe, sample, and drill back into her bag, and stood up briskly. "Good _day_." The door couldn't close quickly enough behind her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Fear of suffocation

DAY 3 - In Case Of...

_NEC 0001_

_My dear Steph,_

No, no, that was sickly. Steph would be embarrassed for them both.

_Dear Steph,_

What, was she writing to inform her that her house insurance had lapsed?

_My Steph,_

No. If this all went south, she'd have to be someone else's Steph one day.

_Steph,_

_I'm writing this in case of trouble. Something went wrong with the Zi-forming and now Earth's atmosphere is completely unbreathable._

Did she spell that right? Lin scratched it out and rewrote it several times with and without a second 'e'. She should've typed this.

_The techs think they've got something that can pull enough oxygen out of the air for us to breathe. They've hooked it up to a couple powersuits and I'm one of the lucky PBIs who gets to give it a try._

_If it all goes well I'll tell you all about it and this letter will have been a waste of time. But if you're reading it, it obviously didn't go well._

_I agreed on the condition that they wake you up, no matter what happens. I'm not doing this for my country. I'm not even doing it for 'humanity' or some propaganda horseshit. I'm doing it because I was ordered to, and if I'm dead because their shit didn't work I want you to never, ever let them forget it._

Maybe a bit harsh? Fuck it, Lin was t-minus three hours to mission start and she wasn't going to waste potentially her last hours alive being polite.

_I love you. Give them hell for me._

_Lin_

The notepad hung loosely in Lin's hands for a second before she ripped off the page and hastily wrote it out again, best spelling and handwriting this time. Okay, maybe 'best' was pushing it, but Steph had read enough of her notes on the fridge that she could probably decipher it. She folded it several times and taped it closed, hopefully enough to convince Sutton it wasn't worth trying to sneak a look in before he handed it to the newly minted widow.

Lin flopped back on her wafer-thin mattress and waved the letter in the air. "Done."

A hand snaked down from the top bunk and flailed around for a moment before finding it. "Got it," said Sutton, tucking it under his pillow going by the creaking of the bunk frame. "Still time to get a fever through the roof if you want out of this shit. My guy's still on duty in the sickbay."

"Don't tempt me. Knowing my luck the fucking drugs'd kill me and the test would go off without a hitch."

"Ain't that the truth."

***

At 0852 hours, the mech crew stopped messing with the suits and let Sergeant James Reed and Corporal Lin Tsai climb into their cockpits. Pre-sortie checks came naturally to Lin, a welcome distraction from the excited murmurs of the presidential delegation that had come down among the common folk for the privilege of seeing two idiots take their lives into their hands. All it needed was for someone to be flitting around serving canapés.

Stabilisation green. Motion feedback green. All joint tension green.

"Tsai, this is Reed. Radio check, over."

"Reed, this is Tsai. Roger, out."

O2 tank levels green. Switchover valve green. Oxygen condenser... supposedly green.

"Suits, proceed to grav elevator then move to designated test location."

Environment seal complete. Oxygen tanks engaged. Movement inhibitors released. The boss moved first, of course, then Lin pushed her suit forwards, sending ripples through the metal floor with every step that all the other kind of suits would feel. What did they even think they were going to see in the hangar bay?

The elevator began its eerily smooth movement downwards, and Reed turned his suit to face Lin. "You okay? Over."

"Ask me in five minutes, over."

"You know the procedure. This thing fails, you bail and get to the supplemental tank on the back. This isn't hard. Out."

Ah yes, the thing they'd been arguing with the engineers about for days, and that eventually the mech crew had just gone behind the eggheads' backs and installed anyway. 'We've tested the condenser! It works!' 'Even if it doesn't work, you can just switch back to the tanks!' 'We've tested the switchover valve! It works!'

Motherfuckers.

Lin barely felt the elevator stopping. Radar showed nothing but each other, but she and Reed turned back to back and swept over the surrounding hills. There'd been talk that if this worked, the next step was a 48-hour expedition, and if there was anything out there Lin wanted to know about it.

Nothing. Apart from the wind through the plants, it was like nothing lived here at all.

"Clear, over."

"Clear. Proceeding to test site, out."

Fifty metres past the shadow of the ship, so the engineers could be absolutely sure there was no excess oxygen from the ship's ventilation, and a good minute from the elevator at a dead sprint. Lin felt herself rise a little out of her seat.

"Suits, this is Control, you have reached the test location. Switch to condensers when ready, out."

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

Her hand trembled against the stick, and the minute jostling of the suit only made it worse. Her other clung white-knuckled to the escape handle.

"Control, this is Reed, switching to condensers now, out."

Lin bit her lip hard and slammed down on the switchover control. Something _clunked_ , the condensers spun up, and she forced herself not to hold her breath. The timer on the screen counted down the two minutes it was meant to take to completely clear the air from the tanks.

"Control, this is Tsai, switching to condensers. Out."

God, what stupid last words. If she could still breathe after two minutes...

It didn't matter. One way or another, Steph would be out of the pods. The bastards wouldn't get to leave her behind, surplus to requirements or not. If it all went south, Sutton had the recording she'd made of the agreement, and he was crazy enough to make it public. They couldn't court-martial a dead person, and if Sutton got an angry discharge, well, all the better for him.

The countdown hit zero.

She could breathe.


	4. Chapter 4

Day 4 - Creation

_NEC 0001_

Everything was as in-place as it was going to get. Dave ran over the body of the dormant Kabtor with an electrical test probe, checking every joint for neural conductivity. Everything beeped as it should. He swept away a few last flecks of the rock matrix that had escaped weeks of agonising preparation, resigned himself to the bits he couldn't reach, and stepped back down the ladder.

Silv looked at him with those mad eyes that looked like they hadn't slept since they found the specimen weeks ago in the rockslip. "We're ready?" Dave nodded, and she plucked the ladder away. "You heard him, Colonel! We are _ready_!"

Colonel Adamczyk stood arms folded and chin tucked, not bothering to hide his lack of delight. Silv didn't care, and shooed him backwards as she took up her position at the charger. Dave stood ready with the connector. The plan was simple—attach the charger, dial up the power, run as necessary. They may not have told the Colonel the last past.

The horn had seemed the obvious place to attach the power cable, but looking into the dull metal eye as he waited for the go-ahead, Dave couldn't help but wonder if this was the end he wanted to be standing at. It occurred to him he'd never seen a living zoid in its natural body before.

"Ready on the cable?"

"Ready!" It was starting to not sound like a word any more.

"Ready on the charger! Do your thing!"

It only took a second—Dave clamped the cable onto the Kabtor's horn and dived back behind the charger with Silv. It didn't flinch like he'd feared it might.

"Initiating charge in three... two... one!" She started turning the dial on 'one', that wasn't how they'd—

The Kabtor jolted. Dave and Silv looked at each other. Adamczyk leaned forwards.

Silv's eyebrows looked fit to escape off the top of her forehead. "... I'll keep going if you want to."

Dave pursed his lips. "... Same to you."

That was enough to get Silv back on the dial. They watched, each with one eye on the power readouts and one on the faintly twitching zoid, the buzz of the charger slowly climbing higher than the rumbling condenser in the wall.

Spots of missed dirt and rock began to fall softly from the Kabtor's body. Adamczyk took a step closer, all contempt forgotten. "Is it alive?"

"Working on it!" said Dave, hammering down the curious ape temptation to reach out and touch the highly electrified metal thing. The twitching grew stronger with the current, limbs started to move synchronously instead of just spasming. It was trying to stand, he thought before scolding himself for assigning meaning to what was effectively a seizure.

The wings flickered, the head rose just a hair. The connector!—the connector held. The graph kept rising, then its body gave another, massive jolt. With a roll that had real power behind it, it wrenched the connector from its horn.

The Kabtor's eyes flashed. They were blue!

Nobody dared breathe. The living Kabtor turned its head side to side, perhaps perplexed to have awoken in a dingy prefab being stared at by three slack-jawed humans. Had it ever seen a human before? It shook itself, sending flakes of pitted metal across the room to reveal a glossy black exoskeleton, armoured in emerald green.

Dave wiped the residue from his face, and spat the stuff that got in his mouth when he gasped. Adamczyk spoke for all of them; "Holy shit."

Silv took in a few gasping breaths and broke into a barking, exhausted, disbelieving laughter. She tried to choke it back as the Kabtor bridled, hiding her face behind her hands and peeping out between her fingers. It stilled again, and Dave had to, he just had to.

He reached out. Adamczyk tried to grab him—too slow. His hand brushed the horn, still slightly warm from the current, and perfectly smooth.

The Kabtor reared on two legs, swung its horn wildly at the intrusion. Equipment came clattering down as it landed, and more fell to its swinging and kicking and flapping. Adamczyk swore like Dave had never heard before as he grabbed him and Silv and hurled them out of the way.

The old pilot squared his shoulders and stared down the newborn zoid. It reared again, stepped back, reared, but never lunged. Adamczyk stepped closer. "Now, you listen here you little—"

The Kabtor caught a table on its horn and flung it, clear over Adamczyk's head. In the second it took him to stand up from ducking it had made a dash for the wall, stoving in the sheet metal as it slammed its horn into it again and again. Silv took in short, deep breaths like they'd been trained, and gestured for Dave to do the same. The wall ripped, and the Kabtor dived out into the blue.

Adamczyk swore some more, and Dave and Silv sprinted out to the ruptured wall. Already in the distance, the Kabtor climbed into the sky. "Um," said Dave, against atmo breach protocols, "have a good life, I guess."

Under the relative safety of the condenser unit, Adamczyk cleared his throat. They picked their way over the debris back to him, and maybe it was the brief shortage of oxygen but Dave and Silv couldn't help but grin.

"You saw that! You all saw that! It worked!" Silv babbled, bouncing on the balls of her feet and pulling Dave in close.

Adamczyk pinched the bridge of his nose. "For a certain definition of 'work', yes."

"Hey, it could've gone worse. We could have started with the Kuwaga."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Minor depersonalisation

Day 5 - Escape

_NEC 0004_

Cass leaned hard into the controls as if there was any faster Trouble could run. Silver, Magpie, Tempo, Sting, she begged for her comrades' voices to come over the radio. They could've taken the Stegosage, could've taken his Raptor escort, but the damn Imps had figured out how to tack guns onto living zoids' bodies! The Raptors had scythed down the Raptorias with fire before they could get into melee, and the Stegosage's missiles threw Trouble off-balance long enough for the tail to destroy her eye.

She'd had no choice. _They'd_ had no choice, she reminded herself, there were two lives she was responsible for. Trouble shook her head and growled at the force Cass had to use, even half-blind a liger was a fighting beast. "Come on, move," Cass hissed, "no use dying here!" Trouble just snarled.

They crashed through trees and bracken, and damn the trail they left. "Arthur Base," Cass panted into the radio, "this is Skinner 31 Actual. We've been ambushed, I'm the only one standing. Attempting to RTB at best speed, transmitting heading now. Requesting escort, over." Base was kilometres out yet, but nothing the Imps had could outrun Trouble.

"Skinner 31, this is Arthur Base. Roger that, we'll send a squad to meet you. Out."

Finally, they'd have numbers again. "That's my Raptoria days talking," said Cass, easing a little on the controls to lay her palm on Trouble's console, "I know you don't care about going it alone." She couldn't work out what the snort she got in reply meant. Probably nothing. It didn't matter, as long as she didn't slow down.

A speck of red stood out among the green to their left. Cass twisted to get a better look, and Trouble felt it. Leaves and bark flew up around her feet as she skidded to a halt, bringing herself around in a skid to get her remaining eye on whatever her rider saw. "No! Keep going, keep going, you stupid animal!" Cass wrenched the controls, flattened the accelerator, but Trouble's head lowered, her back arched, and her tail swished. Whatever that visor belonged to, the idiot cat had seen it.

"We can't do this, Trouble!"

Radar showed it clear as day. One contact, advancing slowly. Trouble rolled her shoulders, ignoring her rider fighting the controls. Out of the trees stepped a Gilraptor, tan and black turning dappled orange in the evening light.

There had never been a zoid that had made Cass cry, and she swore she was not about to let that change. "Please don't do this, girl." She felt Trouble tense, and remembered to keep her tongue out of the way of her teeth.

Trouble roared, all anger and frustration and violence, launching herself face first at her fresh target. The Gilraptor sidestepped, the stupid liger had telegraphed it, and Trouble screeched at the volley of shots at her flank. She whirled, went for the Gilraptor's face, snapped air, lunged again, again, the Gilraptor stepping back and aside every time.

"He's fucking with us." Cass' hands flexed. "All right, asshole. You wanna roll? We can roll."

The roar rolled up through the cockpit, and Cass threw the controls forwards only milliseconds ahead of Trouble's response. Cass pulled to the side, Trouble followed, the Gilraptor sidestepped right into their waiting jaws. He shrieked despite his visor and lashed his neck about to try and dislodge them. Trouble ground her teeth against him, digging her claws into his shoulder, riding it out.

The pistons in the Gilraptor's neck creaked like they wanted to buckle. Cass grinned—the rider must've never fought something their own zoid's size before. She'd ridden captured Raptors still with their visors, uncomfortably mindless, nothing like the ferocity of a free zoid. What use was a zoid without a brain?

"Shit! Trouble, let go!" Trouble growled and clamped down even tighter, only to howl out in pain as the Gilraptor's claws raked her ruined eye socket. He snapped at her face, she dropped her head to get away, no, no! No! Cass pulled up as hard as she could, but the teeth came down too quick.

The cockpit barrier went to static under the crushing power of the jaws, and Cass felt Trouble's feet leave the ground in spite of her furious writhing. Shot after shot slammed into Trouble's exposed belly, and Cass screamed with her.

Not like this...

Something shifted.

Every readout died, and the air buzzed inside the cockpit. Cass' stomach rose. Hold on, just hold—

She _screamed_. Every muscle in her body ratcheted itself bowstring-taut, her heart pounding like it wanted to break her ribs from the inside. She felt more than saw what happened—Trouble's mane claws slammed down on the Gilraptor's head, shredding his crest and armour. Through muddy, bloodshot, pulsating vision Cass could see his face as he darted away. The visor... she'd missed the visor...

Cass swayed in the cockpit, trying to hyperventilate through the pain. Blood trickled down to her top lip. Her eardrums felt like they'd burst, all she could hear was her heart. Trouble's whole body rippled with power. She'd blasted. Not for their comrades, not for the Stegosage that had blinded her, but...

... _For you_...

Trouble hurled herself at the Gilraptor again, quicker than Cass had ever felt her before, like she didn't have near a dozen bullets in her. The Gilraptor toppled from the force of it, Trouble ripping into him with teeth and claws and mane in a frenzy Cass could only cling on through. The shotels ground and whined against their restraints, and for a second she thought she imagined the visor cracking.

Cass felt the sound coming out of her partner through her chest. In that moment she might have been a zoid or she might have been an evil god, a thousand different rages at once. She tore through the Gilraptor's armour, into his chassis, and with a stomach-turning lurch ripped out his core through his chest. Cass tasted the metallic flesh with a strange hunger as Trouble crushed it triumphantly.

They stood over the fallen Gilraptor, and reached down to take him in their jaws. All their strength came together to hurl his corpse as hard as they possibly could, flinging their vanquished enemy through the air as one final roar of contempt.

They took two steps, and collapsed.

***

Cass dragged herself through the dirt with burning, screaming arms. The cockpit barrier had failed. Beside her, Trouble lay still. There was still time. The escort squad was coming. They could... they could...

By Trouble's blind eye socket, she stopped. No further. Couldn't even lift her arm, had to touch her partner with her pounding head. Just lay there.

Her vision greyed. At her side, something moved a little. Her head hit soft earth.

What little light remained disappeared. She felt the air move aside, and something came down around her, lifted her. Metal, cold, sharp. She knew.

"You stupid, stupid cat..."


	6. Chapter 6

Day 8 - Change

_NEC 0001_

Lab coat flung hastily over their pyjamas and shoes dived into un-socked, Lou bounced on their heels the whole elevator ride down to the Surface Access Bay. It had only taken the squaddies _five weeks_ to find a freaking zoid out there.

You were Not Supposed To Run on board the ship, so Lou power walked to the knot of troopers and powersuits by the grav elevator, craning their neck to try and see what they'd brought in. Simone had warned them not to get too excited, but screw that. There might be hope for the Zi-forming yet.

"Excuse me! Zoology, coming through!" The troopers grunted collectively, and a couple moved aside. Most of them, though, clung onto ropes and cables holding... holding... "What the hell is that?"

Whatever it was, it leaned side to side drunkenly in what was maybe an attempt to fight the ropes, gaping its jaw so wide Lou wondered if it could even close it. Corroded, filthy, and barely as tall as Lou themself, it could have been a Raptor at some point in its life. "What did you do to it?"

"Found it that way," said one of the powersuits, "and a buncha others too. Little bastards went for us soon as they saw us."

Simone emerged from the other side of the group, still wearing most of her breathing gear. "Our comms and the suits' HUDs went wonky when they got near. The boots have called them 'jamingas'."

Lou's eye twitched involuntarily. "Okay, I'll bite."

"Guy who yelled 'they're jamming us' has a pretty thick accent."

"Of course..."

"Hey, you got anything better, I'm all ears."

"How about 'hideous abomination against god and everyone'?"

"It'll never catch on."

Lou fished their phone from their pocket. "So it actually disrupts comms?"

"No, but something goes funky with tech when they're around." Simone shrugged. Sure enough, the phone switched on normally, though with less signal than Lou would expect down here, and a touch of input lag.

They pocketed their phone again. "I didn't even know zoids could do stuff like that. Not without gear."

"I'd hardly call this thing a zoid."

"Zoid, 'jaminga'," they made a retching noise over the word, "whatever you call it, there is something really freaking wrong with it. Wish you'd brought me a dead one."

"Then you'd complain you didn't have a live specimen."

"Fair," said Lou, "is it dangerous? Are we going to have a time handling it?"

One of the squaddies chimed in. "Don't worry about it, they're a piece of piss when you get 'em on their own. You can punch 'em and they'll go down."

Lou had to admit, they'd been wondering why she was cradling her hand to her chest. "Do you... need to go to medical?"

" _Yes_."

Broken-handed squaddie successfully shooed off to the infirmary, attention went back to the... the jaminga (god, were they really going to have to call it that?). So much for that hope for Zi-forming. "Where are we even gonna keep it?"


End file.
